The situation continues to ferment! Many big sellers were reported for illegal operations

On the Amazon platform, there have been many cases where sellers' accounts have been blocked due to merging variants. The platform has also repeatedly prohibited manipulating reviews and misleading consumers through merging variants, but some sellers still repeatedly cross the red line.

Recently, news has been circulating in the industry that a large number of top Amazon sellers have violated regulations by merging reviews, abusing variants, and other practices. After a personal care products seller was fined more than 4 million RMB, many more sellers have been reported, and there are even reports that they will sue these sellers to the US FTC.

In addition, many sellers received warnings about incorrect variant relationships. They suspected that Amazon had started a new round of number sweeps. It can be seen that Amazon has not relaxed its stance on such issues.

Many big sellers were reported for abusing variants

"In the pet category, a product obtained the title of Best Seller by abusing variations. Why hasn't Amazon dealt with it?" a seller posted on a social platform.

According to the seller’s revelations, the product mentioned in the article is actually a dog paw ointment, but the seller abused the variant method to obtain the cat clothing node, and this product also became the number one BestSeller in the “Cat Clothing” subcategory.

What makes sellers even more angry is that with the help of BestSeller, the seller's product traffic has increased significantly, the conversion rate has also increased, and at the same time, the traffic of other products in the category has also been occupied. After further investigation, some sellers found that this store was registered with an American company and started operating in 2017. It is considered an old store. It is conceivable how long this operation has lasted and how much profit it has made.

Compared with the above sellers' product variations in the same category, there are many sellers whose operations are more obvious. According to the sellers' revelations, there are Chinese sellers who cross categories and merge reviews of multiple other products into products in another category. "It's completely irrelevant and looks very obvious. I really don't know what they are thinking," said a seller.

There was also a cordless vacuum cleaner seller who combined 7,000+ reviews and was exposed by the seller. The relevant information was directly posted to the social forum. The content mentioned that the poster had tried to report the seller, open a case and other methods to complain about the seller, hoping that Amazon would deal with the seller. But after many complaints, the seller found that such reports were useless and the listing of the cordless vacuum cleaner was still firmly in place. At the same time, the official response after the report was: This listing did not abuse the policy.

This move by the platform has also stimulated many overseas sellers. They said that Amazon will only be tolerant of Chinese sellers and will not punish Chinese sellers. If a normal seller has such an operation, it will generally be suspended within 30 seconds, and the account will be blocked in the blink of an eye. Some people even suggested that like the recent case of the hot sales of personal care products, these sellers should be reported directly to the FTC, so that Amazon will definitely take action.

A personal care product seller was fined more than 4 million RMB for abusing variants

Some time ago, multiple media outlets revealed that a major seller of personal care products was found to have violated regulations by merging reviews and abusing variants. The U.S. Federal Commission issued a huge fine of more than 4 million RMB to the seller, which attracted the attention of many sellers because it was the first time in the history of the FTC that a penalty was imposed for the abuse of variants.

It is understood that this personal care product seller used two kinds of black technologies at that time.

One of them is to merge variants. Many sellers have developed new products in the same way, which is to use the original BestSeller products and Amazon Choice products to create variants, bind old links, and let the new links directly share the reviews , rankings, and star ratings of the old links to increase the conversion rate of new products. Another is to hijack the ratings and reviews of other products to increase the ratings and number of reviews of new products.

It is understood that during 2020 and 2021, this big seller used two black technologies to make many unrelated new products famous and increase sales. But it is precisely these two behaviors that have caused many sellers to fail, because Amazon has long had relevant policies: it is strictly forbidden to obtain a large number of reviews by merging variants, otherwise it will be considered as manipulating reviews.

As this incident was revealed, more similar incidents were gradually exposed. This is also the reason why many sellers on some overseas social media platforms mentioned in the previous article took the initiative to disclose the illegal merging of comments and abuse of variants in their categories, and some sellers even tried to report these behaviors on social platforms.

At the same time, Amazon has not relaxed its stance on such issues, and a number of sellers have reported that they have received warnings from Amazon.

A group of sellers received warning letters from Amazon

“Today I received a warning about incorrect variant relationships, including a performance notification and account status. Customer service also called to say they wanted to file a complaint,” said one seller.

According to the seller, the performance notification received this time has 3 children, and one parent says invalid variant type. The seller admitted that he did violate the rules and merged the toy listings with the office supplies listings in order to merge the reviews.

Previously, this seller often received reports of father-child variant relationships being dismantled, but there were no performance notifications or account status, so the seller thought it was a prank by his peers and re-established the variant relationship. However, this time he received a performance notification, and the appeal button was different from before. Obviously, this time it was more serious, and he is currently considering whether to delete the toy listing.

In this regard, some sellers said that the warning for illegal variation is still minor compared to other policy warnings. It is recommended that sellers file an appeal first to resolve the warning given by Amazon. At the same time, it is best to delete the toy listing, otherwise it is likely to affect the account rating in the future.

Coincidentally, many sellers also reported that they had received warning letters from Amazon ↓

I've also received several warnings recently, and only two of them were approved after appealing.

I also received it some time ago, but the variant was incorrect, which I solved by ticking the box.

Amazon is probably sweeping up variants recently, and it’s too difficult to file a complaint.

I feel like I need to be more careful, I've received several warnings.

Obviously, Amazon has not relaxed its crackdown on illegal behaviors such as merge variants. According to past habits, Amazon will warn sellers after discovering such problems, and the most serious one is to block their accounts. However, this time the FTC intervened and issued a high fine, which means that if such problems occur again in the future, it may not be as simple as blocking the account. If overseas sellers really want to report the incident to the FTC and name Chinese sellers, neither Amazon nor the FTC will be lenient. Sellers should just sell their products peacefully and stop all illegal operations.

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